Why it's Important to Keep Reading While Writing

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I’ve heard some writers say recently that they prefer not to read while they’re actively working on a writing project, just so they’re never tempted to accidentally borrow anything another book. While I do understand this idea, I also think it’s unnecessary, and perhaps even detrimental. Stories are all around us, and I doubt the authors who refuse to read are blocking out tales from their friends and family, television and movies, or social media. We’re consuming so much all the time, and it’s beyond important these days to be intentional with our consumption. So how do you know what to read while writing? Here are some considerations:

Read to stay engaged in the community.

Readers love to talk about books and stories, that’s for sure! There is incredible value in being able to participate in this conversation, not just as an author, but as a reader too. Consider BookTok, Goodreads, Bookstagram, and more. Readers love to know what others have been reading, and there’s something incredible about authors lifting up other authors. I love to see my favorites talk about their favorites. This can serve as engaging with your own readers, and it can also serve as engaging with friends. There’s a lot of overlap here, and it’s so worth it.

Read to figure out what you like and dislike in a novel.

If you’re reading critically, looking at the structure of the sentences, at the multi-faceted characters, at the beats of the plot, there is always something to learn. Every single book I pick up teaches me something. Perhaps I realize that I really love a certain element—great banter, lots of dialogue, realistic characters, a sassy heroine—but I might also note that there are a few elements that just aren’t for me—the insta-love trope, long paragraphs of exposition, characters that are immature. None of these things are necessarily good or bad for each reader, but knowing what I like will certainly inform what I write. I probably won’t write any books with the insta-love trope any time soon, and I’ll likely be crafting characters who are sassy, realistic, and like to banter. Knowing what I love doesn’t mean I’ll include it every single time, but it’s definitely helpful in identifying elements that I can add to a novel in the future.

Read to keep up to date in the industry.

This one might seem a bit boring, but to me, it’s one of my favorite things about working in the publishing industry: an excuse to read all the new books! It’s smart to keep an eye on what books are coming out, what authors are successful or newly published, what topics or tropes are trending, what genres are super hot, and more. There’s power that comes with this knowledge, in that you can shape your own writing career differently if you want. Perhaps the topic surrounding an idea that you’ve had incubating for a while is trending, so now might be a great time to get it written and published as soon as you can. Perhaps a book you wrote years ago with little success would be perfect for the new hot topic, so maybe you’ll want to rerelease it. Keep an eye out for changes and shifts in the industry, because you can definitely use them to your advantage.

Read to try new things.

We’ve probably all picked up a new, unexpected book before, only to find that we love this new author, or we’re shocked that we’ve never tried this genre before. There’s very little risk in reading new and different books, so it’s a great opportunity to share what you haven’t tried before. Try a new genre, or a book written in a time period you don’t generally gravitate toward. How about a new author, a debut author, or one you’ve been meaning to try forever? Look for a different series, a different topic, or characters who haven’t lived a similar life as you. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find something different to write for yourself next time.

Read to distract you from your own world for a little while.

One thing that I see happening with nearly every author I work with is the burnout that comes with focusing on one project for months or years. It’s easy to get into your own world a little too much. There are some pitfalls that come with that, including not being able to see the forest from the trees, so when you have the opportunity to break away from the world you’ve created and jump into someone else’s world, perhaps you should take it. It’s good to let your brain rest for a while, allowing it to recharge and get reinvigorated for your next writing sesh. You might find that your writing is much better after reading other books, or that your creativity is refreshed in a surprising way.

Read to stay in love with reading.

Perhaps the most obvious of the reasons to keep reading while you’re writing is this: because you love it. You probably wouldn’t be a writer if you didn’t love reading. I’m sure there’s an author or two out there who don’t identify as book lovers, but the vast majority of us do. So just keep reading because you love it. Read whatever you want whenever you want, and your heart will thank you.

Help! My Revisions are Taking Too Long!

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Whether you’re working on your own revisions on yet another draft, or you’re completing revisions after your editor has had their way with your manuscript, it’s easy to feel like you’re not doing it in the right amount of time. If it’s taking longer than expected, you might think that you had too many changes, so you must be a bad writer, or perhaps that your editor was too heavy handed, so they must be a bad editor. You might think you’re too slow or even too dumb. If revisions are going too quickly, you might assume that you’re missing things, that you hired a crappy editor that didn’t catch enough, that your book is still gonna suck.

None of these thoughts are fact. The truth is, there are so many variables when it comes to completing your revisions (just like completing your first draft, or your second!), and none of them mean anything about your intelligence or your capabilities as a writer. So what CAN affect the time it takes to do revisions? Here are a few of those variables:

The length of your novel

This one might be the most obvious! The length of your novel can absolutely affect how long it takes to complete your revisions. If you wrote a 150,000-word epic fantasy, it will take you a whole lot longer to comb through it than if you wrote a 30,000-word novella. Even if you know your novel like the back of your hand, a revision that is thorough should be expected to take some time, so try not to rush yourself or become frustrated if it’s not done in whatever amount of time you expected.

What draft you’re on, or what level of editing you had completed

The amount of time it takes you to complete revisions will also largely be dictated by what draft you’re on. If you’re on your second draft, you’re likely to have more to clean up than if you’re on a third or fourth draft. Likewise, the level of editing you had completed can really affect how much work you have to do. A developmental edit might require heavy plot or character changes, which might take longer to plan out and weave throughout your full manuscript. Copy editing, even with a heavy hand, might take quite a bit less time because it’s more straight forward, and often doesn’t require a lot of preplanning on your part. And even more obvious, proofreading should really only be catching typos and small errors, so it should be the quickest of all the revisions.

Your writing experience level

Now, this doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence or how good of a writer you are. The truth of the matter is that if you’ve written and revised many times, you’re going to be faster at it than if this is the first time you’ve done so. When you revise multiple projects over time, you naturally develop a system that increases your efficiency. Likewise, as you keep writing and revising, over time, you start to understand your own voice and style, so you already know what your weaknesses might be, and what areas to focus on. It’s only natural that as you gain experience with writing, your revision process goes faster and faster each time.

What else is going on in your life right now

I can’t emphasize this one enough. When all is said and done, if your personal life is extremely busy, you likely just won’t have as much time to write or revise. This is true whether your writing is a hobby, a side hustle, or your full-time gig. Our personal lives can easily take over our writing life, not only time- and schedule-wise, but by hijacking our mood. If we’re having a bad day, it’s a lot harder to dive into a rom com that you’re trying to revise, so you can’t always predict how long revisions will take. There’s just too much life stuff that can interrupt.

So stop berating yourself for not revising fast enough, and give yourself a little grace. You’ll be done in due time.

Why Forcing Your Book Into the Wrong Genre Only Hurts You

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I have recently seen multiple authors insisting that their book fits one genre, but refusing to adhere to the rules of that genre in the same breath. Not surprisingly, not long after, they’ll complain about low sales and negative reviews, but have no idea why. Well, I’m here to tell you the tough truth:

Forcing your book into the wrong genre only hurts you.

I see this the most with romance novels, because the romance genre tends to be very picky. There are many subgenres to sort out the particulars, but there are still a handful of rules that all romance novels, no matter the subgenre, must adhere to. The stickiest, in my humble opinion, is that every romance novel must have a happily ever after (HEA), or, at the very least, a happily for now (HFN). There are no ifs, ands, or buts about this rule. If there is not an HEA or an HFN, it’s not a romance novel.

There are, of course, some loopholes here—say, you write a three-book series about the same couple, and the first two books end in cliffhangers, but by the end of the third book, everything is resolved. The characters aren’t necessarily happy at the end of the first two stories, but they are happy at the end of the series. Technically, this can still fit into the romance novel genre, but you probably shouldn’t break any other romance rules while you’re at it (heaven forbid, one of them cheats!) or you’ll have romance readers knocking down your door. The only reason you can call the three books romance novels is that the romance is the most important plotline, and also, the characters are going to end up happy in the end.

On the other hand, if your characters all die at the end, a la Romeo & Juliet, you do not have a romance novel on your hands. But, you say, the romance is the most important plotline! Well, that’s great, but there is no way to have a HEA or HFN in this story. But, you insist, it has to be a romance novel. You love romance novels, and romance readers will probably love this book!

Let’s back up for a moment. What’s the point of choosing a genre in the first place? Yes, it’s a way of categorizing books in the library and in bookstores, but even more than that, it’s a way of getting your book in front of the right readers. It’s the reader’s job to know what type of books they like, and then search them out. So a romance reader probably has all the typical romance reader expectations: the book must end with an HEA or HFN, there’s no cheating, the romance is the most important plotline, etc. They can confidently pick up any book marked Romance and know that it’s going to satisfy all of these requirements. They know that they won’t be disappointed by sad endings or other plotlines overshadowing the all-important romance.

Perhaps you write a novel that’s been in your heart for years. You can practically see the scenes jumping off the page, and writing the full-length novel is one of the easiest things you’ve ever done. You title it Romeo & Juliet 2.0 to make sure that romance readers know this is the one for them. The story follows two modern young adults from opposing football teams who fall in love despite their families’ hatred. They split up in the end, but that’s better than dying, right? You’ve even twisted some of the elements—it’s now darker, grittier, and even has some paranormal elements to it.

So let’s say that you insist on calling R&J 2.0 a romance novel. A romance reader is going to pick up your book with those romance genre expectations, and what will they find? They’re sure not going to find an HEA or HFN there! And now, that romance reader is pissed. They feel disappointed in the story. They’ve been let down. Their expectations have not been met. And so they write a negative review on Amazon, and on Good Reads, and maybe at an independent bookstore or two for good measure. They tell their friends your book sucks. They refuse to read another book from you in the future. They move on to other romance novels that they expect will live up their expectations.

So who is hurt here? Yes, the reader is still pissed, but in the end, by forcing your book into the romance genre, you only hurt yourself. You hurt your reviews, you hurt your sales, and you hurt your career.

Now alternatively, you could have placed R&J 2.0 in a more appropriate genre, like dark fiction with romantic elements. Now, the right readers—who enjoy tormented characters and dark themes, and don’t care about happily ever afters—can find the book. These are the readers who will love your book, who will write positive reviews and share with friends, and who will pick up your next release without a second thought.

I know that as authors, we can become attached to a particular genre, especially if we’re avid readers of that genre ourselves. It’s tempting to say that we fit into a genre, even if it’s not quite the right fit for us. But next time you’re choosing a genre for your book, think twice. Are the readers of that genre your target audience? If not, it might be time to reconsider a new genre.

Are You Giving Yourself Enough White Space?

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My husband is an artist. He takes a piece of leather, a laser cutter, and some paint, and makes these beautiful works of art. He’s made eels and satellites and faces and, my new favorite, a stag. He can knock out a new one in a matter of hours, and I’m always astounded by the piece of art he can make in an afternoon.

But sometimes, he just doesn’t make anything at all.

Some afternoons, he says, “I don’t know what to make. I think I’m going to rest instead.”

And so he does.

He sits on the couch or watches TV or scrolls through social media or talks to friends or whatever appeals to him that day, but he doesn’t do creative work. He takes a break from the deep work of always making something.

And then the next day, or sometimes the day after that, he says, “I have an idea!” and he’s back in his workshop, creating his next masterpiece.

That rest provides white space, a break from creativity, from your brain always being on. That rest is exactly what his brain needs.

Do you give yourself enough white space?

Writers are often always on. Thinking about their characters (or talking to them!). Building a world in their head. Plotting out the next section of the book. Formulating new ideas. Thinking about new titles. Brainstorming goals, motivations, and conflicts. Trying so damn hard to be creative.

But what about the white space?

It’s no coincidence that so many of us get our brilliant ideas in the shower. The ten or fifteen minutes we spend standing under the hot water can provide brilliant white space, where our brains are free to meander where they want, and BAM! There’s the new idea you’ve been struggling with for days.

So maybe take an afternoon off and just do nothing. Sit outside in a shady spot and soak up nature. Meditate for ten minutes. Sit on the couch and just be. Hell, take another shower.

Take a few minutes to give your creativity a break.

Feeling Gratitude For Your Writing Practice

This post may contain affiliate links to products I use and love. If you buy something through one of those links, there is no additional cost to you, but I may receive a small commission, which helps pay for my continued work. Read my affiliate disclosures here.

Even though Thanksgiving is long over, I think New Year’s is a great time to review what our relationship with gratitude looks like. I’m not here to talk about whether or not you have an emphasis on gratitude in your everyday life, but I am interested in what your gratitude looks like during your writing practice.

It’s easy to become frustrated with writing, especially if we’re not published, and just generally not feeling successful in our work. Those are the times in which gratitude is even more important, however. We need to be grateful for writing and its presence in our life, whether it feels like we’re doing it “right” or not. How can we be grateful in the beautiful, successful, exciting moments if we can’t feel grateful for a boring, mundane writing day? More specifically, what if those beautiful, successful, exciting moments are few and far between? Does that mean we only feel gratitude once in a while?

Instead of just waiting for random moments that perhaps naturally fill you with gratitude, try to find places to work gratitude in on a regular basis. Gratitude is much more likely to become a habit in this case, and you are much more likely to find more and more reasons to feel gratitude in the first place. You can journal about it, reflect on it, consider it while meditating. However you choose to express your gratitude, there are so many things to be grateful for in your writing practice.

Feeling grateful for writing in general

What does writing bring you? What does writing fulfill for you? Really think about your own wellbeing after writing. Is it the creativity that fills you up? The discipline? The fun and enjoyment? Maybe you needed a hobby in your life, and writing has really fulfilled that need for you. Maybe you feel more at peace now that you have an outlet. Or does writing feel like an escape from other parts of your life that you perhaps don’t love as much? Whatever it is, feeling grateful for writing in general is a great start to noticing how writing impacts your life for the better.

Feeling grateful for other areas in your life that are impacted by writing

There are so many other areas of your life that can be impacted by your writing, and it’s good to feel gratitude for those things as well. Has writing made you better at your job? Perhaps it’s allowed you to reconnect with an old friend who is also a writer, or spend more time with your grandmother, who is an avid reader. Maybe sitting at your desk for long periods of time has allowed you to watch the seasons pass, or the birds outside your window. Perhaps you’ve explored new genres or made new friends from the neighborhood book club. What has writing brought you that’s not necessarily writing itself?

Feeling grateful for your writing community

If you’ve found yourself a writing community—whether one or two critique partners or a whole group of writers you meet with regularly—you should feel grateful for them! Hobbies often bring together people who otherwise likely would not have met, and that’s a beautiful thing. Your community might be in person or online, big or small, only about writing or a bit eclectic. It’s all great. Celebrate your new friends, critique partners, writing buddies, and mentors.

Feeling grateful for your writing space

People without a dedicated writing space might initially shake their heads at this one, but I think all writing spaces should bring about gratitude. If you have a dedicated space—an office that’s all yours, a shared workspace, or a living room couch that you like to sit on while you write—that totally counts! If you don’t have a dedicated space, think about all the places you find yourself writing. Maybe the coffee shop or a coworking space? Maybe on public transportation while you commute to work, or even the local fast-food joint while you eat lunch during the week. All of those spaces deserve some gratitude, even if they’re not quite what you had in mind. Try to be specific about what exactly you love about the space, and maybe even take a moment of gratitude for it each and every time you sit down to write.

Feeling grateful for progress

This one might not seem quite as obvious to everyone, but when you’re able to progress to the next step of the writing process, be grateful! Finished researching and plotting? Celebrate! Finished your first draft? Celebrate! Just sent your manuscript to an editor? Celebrate! Many authors struggle to move from one step to the next, and progress can be very difficult, so take the time to celebrate it. You’ve completed yet another difficult step, worked hard, and achieved so much! You should definitely feel grateful about it.

Feeling grateful for your failures

This might be the most difficult gratitude of all. It can be really hard to feel grateful when things don’t feel like they’re going well. Perhaps you got a negative review, or less-than-stellar feedback from an editor or beta reader. Maybe all those rejections from agents got you down. Find a way to spin them in order to find the positive. What lessons did you learn? What motivation can you pull from them? How will that feedback make your work even better? There’s always something to learn and be grateful for.

Feeling grateful for your successes

And finally, the easiest gratitude of them all. It likely feels most natural to be grateful for the easy, obvious positives in your life. And while these shouldn’t be the only things you’re grateful for, you absolutely should celebrate them! Be grateful for each positive review, each promising email from an agent, each sale of your new book—and your old ones too. If you’re not published yet, be grateful for each positive show of support from friends or family, each time you sit down to work, each milestone you complete, and each writing-related task you mark off your to-do list. These successes might feel fewer and farther between than some of your other gratitudes, but rest assured—they will come.

However you choose to show your gratitude, be sure to include writing or any of the many ways it makes your life better.

Creating SMART Goals for Writers

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’Tis the season to be making goals and resolutions about our health, relationships, and careers—and that includes writing! Whether you look at writing as primarily a hobby or a career path, creating goals can help you stay on track and motivated. Without a goal, it’s easy to forget that writing is important to you. For me, goals provide a really helpful trajectory toward what I want to accomplish.

One thing we often forget, however, is that not every goal is created equally. When it comes to setting goals for writing, it’s really tempting to just throw something on the page, like “Become a bestselling author.” I mean, that’s the ultimate goal, right? For some, yes, it is, but it’s actually not a great goal to set. It’s a worthwhile achievement, of course, but the goal itself isn’t smart. One person cannot control becoming a bestselling author. Hell, if you’re looking to be traditionally published, you can’t even control if a publisher wants to put your book out into the world, let alone how many copies it sells! So what should you create as your writing goal? I’m not here to tell you what your goal should be, but I am here to tell you a bit about what makes a good goal in the first place.

The SMART goal structure is quite popular, and many people are taught this technique in work or school (I know I was!). It still holds up. Even now, it’s great for helping you determine if you have a good goal or not. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. A good goal should be each of these things, ensuring that you’re in control of achieving your goal.

Specific

Your goal must be specific enough to determine when it is complete. “Become a bestselling author” is not specific enough to be a good goal, because it doesn’t clarify what bestselling list you want to land on. Do you mean The New York Times Best Seller list? USA Today? Amazon? Something else entirely? Likewise, “Finish my novel” is a more specific goal, in that it has a final end point, but you may need to define what that end point really is. Do you just want to complete a first draft? Do you want a completely final draft, after editing and proofreading? And what novel? Ideally, you’d replace “my novel” with a specific project name. There should be absolutely no questions as to what project you’re working on, or what the achievement of that goal will look like.

Measurable

Your goal must be able to be measured and tracked. “Become a bestselling author” is not trackable. You would not be able to see any progress if you were to pursue this goal. It will just happen all at once at some point in time, but you won’t be measuring it along the way. (Before you tell me that some magical number of sales will get you there, do some research. The numbers bandied about on the internet aren’t finite or exact, and not every sale counts equally. Check out this great article from the Self-Publishing School about how The New York Times Best Seller list actually works.) “Finish my novel,” on the other hand, could be tracked in multiple ways—word count, page count, chapter count, tasks. You’re far more likely to keep plugging away at your novel if you can observe progress along the way. Choose your measure of progress based on what makes most sense for you and your project. If you’re writing a novel that’s a bit open-ended in that you don’t know how long it will be, word count may be the best option for you. If you’re working on a collection of essays, the number of chapters or essays might feel better. There’s no right or wrong here, so choose what works for you.

Achievable

Your goal must be able to be achieved. To me, this is really saying that it’s in your control. “Become a bestselling author” requires a serendipity of sorts—the just-right number of sales at the just-right time with the just-right book in front of the just-right audience. While you can write a fabulous book, that alone does not mean you’ll achieve this goal upon publication. It requires so much more than that, as well as a little luck. Sure, the more prolific you are, and the more you cultivate an audience, the more likely you are to hit the best seller list, but even then, it’s not a guarantee. It's not necessarily achievable. On the other hand, “Finish my novel” is black and white, cut and dry, with a clear ending in sight. You can break down the completion of your novel into a set of steps that you can then complete one at a time, eventually achieving the goal. It’s all in your power.

Relevant

You goal must be relevant as far as your higher-level goals and values. Does it align with the other things you hope to achieve? Does it make sense for you to achieve it based on your existing set of values and morals? Ideally, you want your goals to build upon one another, always in service of your values, so if you create a goal that goes against any of these, you may find friction and a lack of motivation. If you’ve decided that your other goals this year include less screen time, full-time travel, or a less sedentary life in a big way, is it even possible to achieve these goals and your writing goals? Finishing your novel might actually require more screen time, less travel time, and a more sedentary lifestyle. So make sure that your goals are compatible, and if they’re not, consider any ways you might adjust them before you just toss one of your goals in the trash. Perhaps you extend the amount of time you’ll need to write your book in order to account for a slower writing pace. Maybe you’d rather handwrite your novel during the week, then transcribe it on the weekend when you’re getting in a little screen time already.

Some SMART goal teachers use “realistic” as the R word instead, and I actually think that I prefer this one a bit more. Your goal must be realistic in order to be achievable. “Become a bestselling author” is likely not realistic for most of us (especially if you’re only working on your first novel!), and in some cases, “Finish my novel” might not be either. If you’re about to give birth to your first kid, now might not be the time to try a goal like, “Finish my novel,” which will take a significant amount of time that you probably won’t have. There’s nothing wrong with adjusting your goals based on your current life circumstances, and it’s actually smart to do so (pun intended).

Time-Bound

Finally, your goal must be finite. There has to be an end in sight, at which time you can say that you’ve achieved the goal. Not only that, but you should be able to attach a reasonable amount of time to said goal. “Become a bestselling author” cannot actually be time-bound because it might be achieved with your first published novel, or it might take years and years to finally happen. For some, it might never happen at all. On the other hand, “Finish my novel” can be assigned a timeline that works for you. For some authors, this might be writing the full novel in a month (à la NaNoWriMo), and for others, it might take a year or more. Do whatever is right for you. To determine the length of time needed for your goal, consider listing out the tasks and/or milestones that will need to occur during the course of the project. This might help you see the full scope of the goal, and determine a realistic timeline.

Now that you understand how to build a good writing goal, go forth and set your New Year’s resolutions—just be SMART about it!